Members of jihadist group Al-Nusra Front take part in a parade calling for the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria, at the Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood of Aleppo (AFP Photo) / AFP

New details of atrocities carried out by Islamist rebel fighters in the town of Adra, 20 kilometers north of Damascus, continue to pour in from survivors of the massacre there, in which reportedly at least 80 people lost their lives.

"The decapitators" is how the Adra residents, who managed to flee
the violence there, now call the people who currently have the
town under their control. Adra, a town with a population of
20,000, was captured by Islamist rebels from the Al-Nusra front
and the Army of Islam last week, following fierce fighting with
the government forces. The town’s seizure was accompanied by
mass
executions of civilians.

Following alarming reports of the massacre, RT contacted
international rights groups including the Human Rights Watch
(HRW), Amnesty International, as well as the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). However, none of them were
able to provide any information.

While the HRW told RT that it “cannot comment at this stage
as our research is still ongoing and it has been very difficult
to get accurate information about what is happening in Adra and
who is responsible for the abuses,” the ICRC said they
“don’t have access to this area and can neither confirm nor
deny any information circulating.”

RT Arabic has managed to speak to some of the eyewitnesses of the
atrocities. Most of them have fled the town, leaving their
relatives and friends behind, so they asked not to be identified
in the report for security reasons.

An Adra resident said he escaped from the town “under a storm
of bullets.” He later contacted his colleagues, who
described how the executions of civilians were carried out by the
militants.

“They had lists of government employees on them,” the
man told RT. “This means they had planned for it beforehand
and knew who works in the governmental agencies. They went to the
addresses they had on their list, forced the people out and
subjected them to the so-called “Sharia trials.” I think
that’s what they call it. They sentenced them to death by
beheading.”

A woman, hiding her face from the camera, told RT of the
beheadings she had seen.

“There was slaughter everywhere,” she said. “The
eldest was only 20 years old; he was slaughtered. They were all
children. I saw them with my own eyes. They killed fourteen
people with a machete. I don’t know if these people were
Alawites. I don’t know why they were slaughtered. They grabbed
them by their heads and slaughtered them like sheep.”

It’s been reported that 80 civilians were killed in the massacre.
The death toll could still grow, as currently the information
coming from Adra is scarce. The town has been surrounded and
isolated by the Syrian army, who have been trying to force the
extremists out.

“Civilians told us that the workers of an Adra bakery were
all executed and burned during the first hours of the attack.
Whole families were massacred. We do not have an exact estimation
of the number because we are unable to get into the town, but the
number is high,” Kinda Shimat, Syria’s Social Affairs
Minister, told RT.

Details of the executions are trickling out of the town as
eyewitnesses tell their stories.

“They killed everyone at the Adra Ummalia police
station,” another fugitive from the town told RT. “And
they killed everyone at the Adra Ummalia hospital where my sister
works. She stayed alive only because she didn’t show up for work
that day. There are about 200 people at the police station. They
are civilians. The militants are hiding among them, using them as
a shield to prevent the Army from bombing the police.”

The events in Adra are a further example of the shift that has
taken place within the Syrian rebel forces which has lately been
dominated by Islamist extremists, according to Michel
Chossudovsky, director of the Centre for Research on
Globalization.

“The so-called moderate opposition forces are virtually
non-existent from the military standpoint,” Chossudovsky
told RT. “The only force which has funding and weapons are
the Islamists, particularly Al-Nusra. And their rebel brigades
are the ones committing atrocities. The divisions are occurring
precisely because segments of the opposition realize that these
terrorist brigades do not belong to the so-called opposition
movement.”

Both the Adra massacre and the latest Aleppo bombing
have signaled the escalation of violence in the war-torn country
ahead of the UN-mediated continuously postponed peace talks on
Syria, now set to take place in Geneva on January 22.

On Monday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for a
ceasefire ahead of the talks.

"We must have a cessation of hostilities before we begin
political dialogue on Syria in Geneva," he said.

More than 100,000 people have died during the three-year-old
civilian war in Syria, according to UN estimates.